More arrests in the London attacks—this time of Somali immigrants in Birmingham. From Saudi Arabia's English-language Arab News, July 28:

In a dramatic breakthrough yesterday, Scotland Yard confirmed they have arrested 24 -year-old Yasin Hassan Omar, one of the four failed bombers who tried to detonate a bomb in Warren Street tube station last Thursday.

The Great Game for control of Central Asia goes on. A few weeks ago, Russia and China, via the regional Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), led a call for the US to set a deadline for its withdrawal from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Today Donald Rumsfeld is back in the region and Kyrgyzstan, at least, is equivocating on demanding a timetable for withdrawal. From today's BBC:

Jane Fonda, AKA Hanoi Jane, AKA Beirut Jane is back in the news. She has chosen a rather uncontroversial moment to oppose the Iraq war, doing a bus tour with Iraq veterans' families. According to the BBC,

An extremely insightful commentary on al-Qaeda and the new terror wave from Al-Jazeera. Soumayya Ghannoushi cuts through the propaganda that the attacks are unrelated to Iraq or any other legitimate grievances—without loaning the slightest degree of legitimacy to either criminal tactics or totalitarian ideology. However, we take issue with the comparison to 19th-century anarchists and post-1960s leftist urban guerillas—who, even in their most misguided bomb-throwing phases, never contemplated anything as grandiose as the serial acts of mass murder attributed to some entity known as "al-Qaeda."

Outrageous quote of the week goes to Israeli Agricultural Minister and rightist, Yisrael Katz:

Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz argued against leaving the greenhouses to the Palestinians. Katz said in the cabinet that doing so would lead to a tough competition between Palestinian and Israeli produce in Europe's markets.

Right, why not leave the Palestinians impovrished, then they will certainly not be able to give Israel "tough competition" economically. Sheesh, haven't they done enough to Gaza?

A very interesting story today cites poll results on American versus Japanese attitudes about the likelihood of a new world war, even if random guy-on-the-street quotes are by definition never presented objectively. It is certainly very telling that Americans are more afraid of North Korean aggression than the Japanese, who are far more likely to be its targets. Also telling that these results come on the heels of a wave of anti-Japan protests in China. Japan is an island nation with a limited armed forces, no nuclear weapons and a constitutional prohibition on war; it faces at least two hostile powers—one by actual policy; the other by tradition—to its immediate east, the latter of which is the most populous nation on earth by far, with a vast territory, a nuclear arsenal and an armed forces of over 2 million active trooops. The US is a continent-spanning super-power (generally held to be the only remaining super-power), isolated by vast oceans from any hostile powers, real or potential; its far-flung military bases and control of the seas and global airspace have no remote parallel in all world history, and it has the planet's biggest and most state-of-the-art nuclear arsenal by far. Yet Americans are more afraid of a new world war. Maybe this is because Americans realize that this new world war is likely to be "asymmetrical," and the United States is likely to be its target precisely because it is the global superpower—and, in fact, this war has already been underway since (at least) Sept. 11, 2001. This, however, raises a question (which this blog/zine has always been obsessed with): if this is a new world war, which number will historians assign it? We, of course, argue Four.

Via TruthOut:

White House Aims to Block Legislation on Detainees
By Josh White and R. Jeffrey Smith
The Washington Post

Saturday 23 July 2005

The Bush administration in recent days has been lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the US military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual.

A Muslim-owned store in a Leeds suburb was set ablaze the night of July 22 in what police called a racially motivated attack. No one was injured in the fire, which destroyed a convenience store in the suburb of Harehills. But the attack, which occurred across the street from the Bilal mosque in the working-class section of town, is being investigated as a "malicious incident." Iqbal Khan, the owner of the store, said the fire began when four white youths started setting merchandise ablaze, then ran out. He said he was able to escape before the store went up in flames.